Mr Nuttall’s £10,000 campaign ‘donation’ is also suspected of being merely a cover for further fraudulent siphoning of EU funds to shore up his Stoke campaign – and the OLAF European anti-fraud unit has been asked to look into it.

Sources close to and within UKIP have told the SKWAWKBOX that no record of the donations exists, that nothing has come through the usual large donors and that the involvement in the campaign of certain party officials who, according to the Guardian, were paid huge amounts of money from EU funds for non-qualifying roles – appears to be part of the same pattern already under investigation by OLAF.

The new investigation is unlikely to be concluded before the by-election on 23 Feb.